Slavery, Reform, and the Woman Question

This is Unit Nine of American Literature, part two of two: the second argument that came out of the first, and two ways of reading a book written to change something. Part one ended on a speech that survives only in other people's handwriting. This part begins with a document that survives exactly, and whose exactness is the point. The governing idea of both parts now pays off: a literature written to change a law borrows the authority of whatever the reader already accepts. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, convening the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, wrote resolutions modelled on the Declaration of Independence and inserted two words into its most famous sentence, so that all men and women are created equal. The form is the argument. That move came out of antislavery work, because women who campaigned against slavery were repeatedly asked to be silent while doing it, and the two causes grew together and quarrelled. Around them sit a newspaper columnist writing on marriage and money, the first American fiction to take industrial labour seriously, and a president who redated his country in two minutes. Then two procedures, one for reading a narrative and one for telling the two kinds of appeal apart. By the end you will be able to say what Seneca Falls borrowed and added. To place the Grimkés, Child and Fern. To describe the first industrial fiction. To account for the Gettysburg Address. And to read a slave narrative for its argument.

Five entries on the reform writers: a convention, two abolitionist sisters, a columnist, a mill town, and a speech of two minutes.

The Declaration, rewritten for women.

AML 0820 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Declaration of Sentiments

Stanton, a lawyer's daughter with an informal legal education, met Lucretia Mott on her honeymoon and with her convened the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls in eighteen forty-eight. She wrote its resolutions, modelled on the Declaration of Independence, holding that all men and women are created equal. The form of the document is the argument it makes.

Antislavery work, producing a second argument.

AML 0821 The Grimké Sisters and Lydia Maria Child

Sarah Grimké wrote on the condition of women in the United States in eighteen thirty-seven, arguing from within an abolitionist movement that often asked women to stay silent. Lydia Maria Child edited, wrote and published against slavery. Both of them show how the two reform causes were entangled, and the movements grew together and quarrelled with each other.

Short columns, in a woman's voice.

AML 0822 Fanny Fern and the Newspaper Column

Fanny Fern, the pen name of Sara Willis Parton, wrote short, sharp newspaper columns in the eighteen fifties on marriage, money and the position of wives, with titles such as "Hints to Young Wives" and "Sober Husbands". She was among the highest-paid columnists of her day, and the humour in the columns is what carries the complaint.

A furnace, and a figure carved from slag.

AML 0823 Rebecca Harding Davis and "Life in the Iron-Mills"

Published in eighteen sixty-one, "Life in the Iron-Mills" takes a reader into a mill town's smoke and follows a furnace worker who carves figures out of slag. It is among the first American fictions to treat industrial labour seriously as a subject. It predates realism as a movement and reads a good deal like it.

Two minutes, and a nation redefined.

AML 0824 Lincoln's Prose: The Gettysburg Address

Lincoln, a self-taught lawyer from a Kentucky log cabin, delivered the Gettysburg Address in eighteen sixty-three in about two minutes. It dates the nation from the Declaration, calls the war a test of whether such a nation can endure, and asks the living to finish the work. The date he chose is itself an argument about the founding.

Three entries to close: one procedure for reading a narrative, one for telling two appeals apart, and the unit's capstone.

Four questions find the argument.

AML 0825 Reading a Slave Narrative for Its Argument

A slave narrative is an argument in the shape of a life, and four questions find the argument. First, what does the passage claim slavery does to people, since the strongest narratives argue that the institution damages the enslaver as well, which is exactly the claim the board's sample passage makes about a mistress whose lamblike disposition gave way to tiger-like fierceness. Second, what stands for freedom in the passage: literacy, a fight, a journey, a name, or the ability to protect a child. Third, who the passage is addressed to, since these books were written for northern white readers who had to be persuaded that the writer was fully human before they could be persuaded of anything else. Fourth, what the passage withholds, since Jacobs writes around her own coercion in language a nineteenth-century audience would accept, and the reticence is evidence rather than absence. Do not read that reticence as vagueness. These books were written under a double constraint, of what readers would accept and of what the writer could bear to print.

Feel this, or check this.

AML 0826 Telling Sentimental From Documentary Appeal

Reform writing persuades in two ways and the exam asks which one a passage is doing. A sentimental appeal works by making the reader feel: it puts a mother, a child or a deathbed in front of you, uses direct address, and asks what you would do in that case. Stowe is the type, and the technique treats emotion as evidence. A documentary appeal works by making the reader see: it accumulates verifiable detail, names places, dates, prices and owners, and dares the reader to check. Douglass and Northup are the types, and that technique treats specificity as proof. Most reform texts use both, so the question is which one carries the weight in the printed passage. Count the concrete particulars. If they are verifiable facts the appeal is documentary, and if they are gestures, tears and appeals to the reader's own heart it is sentimental. The two were not rivals at the time, and a single chapter can move from one to the other.

A life, told as an argument.

AML 0827 Writing Against Slavery: What the Literature Did

The thirty years before the Civil War produced the first American literature written to change a law, and it did. The slave narrative is its central form: a life told as an argument, moving from birth in bondage through a dawning understanding of what slavery is, through an act of resistance, to escape and a chosen name, and framed by white supporters testifying that the author really wrote it, a preface that tells you what the book was up against. Douglass gives the form its greatest example and its two most durable passages. In the first, a mistress who began by treating him as one human being ought to treat another is transformed by the power she holds, so the tender heart becomes stone and the lamblike disposition gives way to tiger-like fierceness, which is the claim that unchecked power corrupts the people who wield it. In the second, a boy learns that his owner forbids literacy because literacy would unfit him for slavery, and takes the prohibition as a map. Jacobs writes the narrative the men could not, in which the owner's pursuit is the danger and seven years in a crawlspace is the escape. Northup reverses the shape, beginning free and being stolen. Beside the narratives run Walker naming Jefferson a hypocrite and Garrison refusing to retreat a single inch. Stowe turns the argument into a novel and outsells everyone by making readers weep over a sold child. And the women doing antislavery work found themselves making a second argument, which Stanton wrote at Seneca Falls by adding two words to the Declaration's most famous sentence. Lincoln ends the period by redating the country from that sentence in two minutes.

That closes the reform decades, and with them the exam's second period. You can say what Seneca Falls borrowed, the Declaration's form and its most famous sentence, and what it added, which is two words, and you can say that the borrowing is the argument. You can place Sarah Grimké writing on the condition of women from inside a movement that asked women to stay silent, Lydia Maria Child editing and publishing against slavery, and Fanny Fern, among the highest-paid columnists of her day, letting humour carry a complaint about marriage and money. You can describe "Life in the Iron-Mills", which took industrial labour seriously before realism existed as a movement. You can account for two minutes at a cemetery that redated a country from the Declaration and called the war a test of whether such a nation can endure. And you can read a narrative through four questions, and separate a sentimental appeal, which asks you to feel, from a documentary one, which dares you to check. Unit ten takes the two poets who changed what a poem could be.